Creeds and Lovers
by Liva Wilborg
Summary: With Robert de Sable's death and the near collapse of the Templar Order in the Latin East, Maria has been following Altaïr to avenge her lover. But following the assassin into the desert, Maria finds her opinion of him challenged.


**Creeds and Lovers - by Liva Wilborg**

**Note 1**

_Coward! Running away. _...the first note simply stated. Taking it in, Maria had drawn her weapon as she dropped the crumpled paper on the ground. Whirling around, she stood ready for an attack, her mind somehow convinced that the message had been for her.

She stood by the dead fire, breathing the icy morning air, straining her eyes for a movement of white amid the cracked yellowed and brown mountain landscape stretching seemingly infinitely around her in waves like a dead ocean. Everything was silent. The sun on the Eastern horizon climbed slowly higher, dispelling the ghostly mist of her breath.

"Coward! Running away." Reading the words again, Maria wondered who he was talking to.

She had been tracking the assassin for more than a month. Sometimes she had to remind herself that she had once had a life, time for kind words, someone to speak them to.

With Robert's death, and the way the Order in the Latin East fell apart in the chaotic aftermath, she had found little to guide her but the thought of vengeance and the constant nagging regret that she had not put a knife in the assassin's back when he left her in Jerusalem.

"You were not my target. I will not take your life." Every time her thoughts rested on him, she heard his voice, heard him arrogantly send her off; warn her not to follow him.

She had been meant as a decoy. Prepared to accept death at his hands. She had been so calm. And then he had discarded her like an unworthy foe and turned his attention to ruining the Templar Order. Ruining the plans, everything they had worked for, everything she had accepted as her truth, everything she was prepared to die for.

The only thing left now was to make him suffer.

**Note 2**

_...father._

_...lost..._

_My returning would... ...but I have stopped believing..._

Most of the thick paper was chewed away by the flames but this note had been balled up tightly and had landed at the edge of the circle of fire.

Maria looked at the angled, strong lines of the script that was left.

She had been thinking all day about the previous note. It was strange. She had never thought that a man like him, an assassin, would even have the faintest idea that reading could be an advantage; much less that he would be writing his thoughts down like a scholar.

When she considered it, the real surprise was that he had thoughts at all. Not just instincts.

**Note 3**

_Did he care about me? Did he love me as a son, like I loved him as a father? Nothing is true? Did he stab me? What did the others see? I can never come to know the truth. Unless-_

Maria put the note down, frowning, uncertain who he could be talking about. She had been looking for him. Wishing only to get close enough to him to murder him.

She had sometimes made her journey dressed as a man. It was easy; for when she travelled. But being a woman was an advantage in many situations. She had walked easily at the village of Masyaf, her face hidden behind a veil as was the custom of the Muslim women.

It was in this disguise she had gotten close enough to the women doing the laundry at the castle to steal a novice's uniform.

For two hectic days she had tried to approach Altaïr, but every time she had managed to catch a glimpse of him, she had somehow been prevented from exacting her revenge; by doors closing, by being commanded elsewhere, by a suspicious look from a castle resident. She couldn't risk discovery before getting close enough to deliver the killing blow, so in each instance she'd had to retreat and rethink her strategy.

And then, just as she had discreetly learned where his bedroom was, she found that he had already packed and left the castle before sunrise. Fuming, she had set off after him.

And now she had finally found him. Or found the notes he was leaving behind, at least. Found him in the rocky, lonely desert of stone where the nights had her breathing ice, shivering under her layers of clothes and a blanket and the days were weighing her down with oppressive heat, exhausting her supply of water.

The mountainous landscape they had both been navigating was stretched behind her and in the direction she assumed he had travelled that morning, there was only a vast plateau, a chain of mountains stretching in the far Eastern horizon.

It was as though nature itself conspired against her. As though all of creation was bent on keeping the assassin alive to taunt her. Maria sighed and put the note in her belt. She couldn't risk letting him see her so she would have to get more than a day behind him in the open landscape. It would be a nightmare, she knew, following Altaïr.

**Note 4**

_We all justify our actions. Give our reasons. Convince others, and ourselves, of the justice of our actions. Nobody wakes up in the morning and decides to do evil. None of the men I have killed have believed that they were monsters. Or have revelled in the thought of being unjust. They were saving the world. _

_But so was I. And it cost me. _

_It's true. Knowledge and sorrow are brothers. _

_But how do I reconcile the truth. How do I use it to shape the future? _

_Maybe the truth is just this: don't use it; don't shape it. Perhaps the realm of thought and intention and the realm of decision and action are too separate, torn apart by practicality, to be relevant for each other?_

_I cannot see an end to this argument..._

Maria read the note again, almost smiling.

She had felt a wave of relief at the sight of his campfire last night. The tiny flame in the landscape of flat, windswept rock covered in low, barbed shrubbery that bit and tore at her legs with its thorns and hooks. But she had finally found him again after many days of wandering, hoping to locate him on the other side of the wide open plateau.

He set a good speed, and was hard to keep up with in ideal circumstances, but when she had to lag behind to avoid discovery it was close to a miracle to have found him again.

_Knowledge and sorrow are brothers._ Maria found the sentence repeating in her thoughts all day and that night, as she clutched the blanket around her in the cold of the nightscape, staring at the flicker of flame of his campfire, the fire she didn't dare light knowing he would discover her, she realised that she disagreed.

Knowledge allowed you to reconcile sorrow, to see new angles and perspectives, to turn problems into advantages. If knowledge and sorrow were brothers, imagination was their brighter little sister, Maria thought and welcomed sleep with a small smile on her lips.

**Note 5**

_If not for this cursed vision, and whatever else might lurk in my blood to set me apart, perhaps I would simply have been happy, empty. A puppet in the Mentor's hands? Do what you are told! Go back! If what empowers me to rule them is murdering him, and I took that burden upon myself, then GO BACK..._

_No use. As it was on my way out here I suspect that my feet are cleverer than the rest of me. Forcing me to remain in solitude until- For the time being, that is enough. Being guided away and hoping at least for the right question to ask of the world to present itself. I cannot be the leader they wish me to be. _

There was a strange sort of monotony creeping into Maria's world; simply following him had been her purpose for so long, she was beginning to believe that she had never done anything else. She found, much to her surprise, that she was happy at the sight of the paper, caught in the thorns of a shrub away from the camp.

The night had been windy and in her mind she imagined him sitting there at the foot of the mountains, cross-legged by the angrily dancing flames, and simply letting the paper fly from his fingers once he had written his thoughts down. As though just committing his fears to paper was a relief from the burden he perceived.

Maria wondered what he meant about his vision but as she reread the note during her long, hot and exhausted day of travelling she suddenly found that there was a feeling lurking in her mind, the colour of compassion and warmth, when her thoughts dwelled on the notes she had collected.

There was a pleasure to knowing the fears and worries that besieged him. It was like a small flower opening in her mind, realising that he was human. Somehow, he had been simply _assassin_ in her imagination and she was surprised that there was room for anything else.

She stopped dead in her tracks, gasping and pressing a hand to her chest as though wounded. Forcefully, she tore the bundle of papers from her belt and ripped them to shreds, letting the landscape be dotted with the remains.

Her heart pounded in terror which quickly turned to rage: "You are going to pay for taking my life away! And no thoughts can change my resolve." she stated loudly to the silent, cracked landscape.

**Note 6**

She had looked at it on the ground for a long time before finally picking it up. Maria held the note up, the text away from her eyes, and was about to tear the paper.

Then, sighing, she turned the paper in her hands and read:

_The apple. That CURSED thing! If not for it, I would never have-_

_I? Lost my arrogance?_

_Malik would not have lost his arm. Kadar his life. The Order its purpose. So many have died. In the siege. In the streets of the cities. In the wake of the conflict we play at._

_I have not changed. Not enough to give them leadership._

How could he be such a fool? How could he doubt his ability to lead and guide his dangerous band of murderers, when he had obviously thought his philosophy through?

If he believed that everyone would strive to commit just deeds for the good of all, then why couldn't he realise that he just had to walk the path. Sometimes, there really wasn't a choice, especially if the higher purpose you held dear was recognised as just one truth of many. Sometimes, waiting for the right question to ask, thinking it would somehow change everything, was folly.

_Just go back and lead them, you idiot... Stop agonising over it if you really wish for redemption._ Maria thought and shook her head.

**Note 7**

_Ingrained in the nature of all of us is the need to have questions answered. We each turn to the teachers within reach; finding whatever solutions to the problems we allow ourselves to imagine. _

_What if my Mentor had not been persuaded to solve what he saw as his responsibility and burden by as grand means as the apple? If he had been contend to try to change his world in a smaller but more permanent fashion, with kindness and teaching instead of assassinations and coercion by violent supremacy?_

_I can only tell myself that the Templars are bent on using the apple for dominance. _

_Good men I knew fell prey to the calling of the apple, the promise of peace and happiness for everybody. The Templars believe that they can control it. That in controlling the apple, they automatically create peace. I believe peace truly _is_ what they wish for. It is what I wish for, too. _

_Who does not want peace of mind, of body, of world? _

_We are alike, if not in creed, then in our hopes and the road we seek to travel. We both seek peace through violent means. We differ where they seek to uphold the peace by taking freedom away, and we must strive to do so by encouraging people to find and reclaim their freedom._

_We must fight for it. An unfortunate truth. But one we must face. Although I wish... probably the same as you, that conflict is unnecessary? Both you and I. _

_You are still not my target._

An icy tingle kissed Maria's spine and she stood holding the paper between suddenly numb fingers. She let the paper flutter to the ground and turned around slowly.

He stood calmly by the gnarled, wind-gnawed tree, a way off. His hood was off and the sun seemed to enjoy playing with the reflections of colours in his eyes. There was dark stubble growing on his chin.

Maria straightened her back and held her head high, holding the man's gaze stubbornly.

"You must be very determined to have followed me out here." he said.

Maria narrowed her eyes, studying him intensely, looking for the mockery she expected in his gesture, listening for it in his words. But all she found was the acknowledgment of her actions. She just gave him a curt nod and rested her hand on the hilt of her sword.

"Did you care about him?" Altaïr asked. "Or are you here to appease your conscience on some assumption that everything had been fine if you had only killed me in Jerusalem?"

"Wouldn't it?" Maria asked, more forcefully than she had intended, her knuckles growing white on the hilt of her weapon.

"For a time, perhaps; yes." He stated dispassionately, holding out his palms in a shrugging motion: "But at some point, people like me would eventually rebel against whatever your masters would create. Whatever empty embodiment of control." he added, his voice tired.

Maria spat at the ground in front of her: "It was never about control! It was about bringing justice and peace to the people!" she said vehemently, gesturing angrily at his calm.

"It always is." Altaïr shrugged: "Every time harsh leadership and dreams of conquest are justified, it's about peace and justice."

Maria laughed, her voice carrying thinly in the crisp morning air: "Are you so unguided? So cynical that you have lost sight of what is true? Of what is just?"

He shrugged his shoulders: "Who are the people?" he asked. "And who are you to force your peace and justice upon them?"

"I? I'm simply in a position to see what must be done to improve the lives of everyone. That is why it is my duty to change things for the better. And if every common man could choose for himself, there would be war, anarchy, chaos. Everything you assassins represent."

"I thought I was arrogant..." he mumbled and sat down calmly on a low branch, leaning against the twisted trunk of the tree, one foot dangling off the ground: "If you do what you do for the greater good, then what would be too high a price to complete your plans? How many voices can be silenced before the greater good is no longer served?"

"You are the one who silences voices. You are the murderer!" Maria stated coldly and moved a few steps closer to the tree where he sat.

"Yes. I am. I killed with impunity, believing I was serving the greater good, too." He shook his head, frowning. "In truth, I didn't have the wisdom to see that a good and just man had stopped being good and just. I had to trust him. I had never been given a choice to do otherwise."

"...I heard it say that you lead them now. The assassin rabble." Maria scoffed: "What sort of leadership is this!"

"Not much of one... I tried to be as the just and honourable aspects of the man I replaced but found the temptation to use the apple as strong as he must have felt after only a few hours. After a few months I was ready to snap under the strain. So I fled my responsibility." He lowered his head and Maria wondered for a moment if the shame she saw was a pretence to entice her to attack. But he soon looked up again and calmly met her eyes: "I hear your side of the conflict is strapped for leadership too... Perhaps you will lead them when you return? Provided you do not attack me."

"You are awfully certain you would win. I have killed before and I came out here to end you." Maria said coldly.

"Why?"

"Why?" Maria hissed. "Why?" it was a scream this time and she drew her weapon and approached him stompingly: "I would end you because you have killed people I respected, you have murdered people I called friends. The only people who have showed me real understanding and kindness."

As she approached the tree where he sat, he agilely jumped down on the other side of the branch, and stood still when she was only a weapon's length from him.

"And you took the life of someone I-" she stopped herself mid-sentence: "... You murdered Robert de Sable."

Altaïr nodded, standing his ground, his hands resting calmly on the branch between them while he seemed to study her, holding her angry gaze.

"Tell me..." Altaïr asked: "Should I refrain from attacking you because you are a woman? Or would you prefer that an opponent showed you the respect you are worth; acknowledging that you are wise enough to understand the consequences of your actions? The risks of dressing yourself as a man, and of playing the violent, male game of politics and war?

"You will respect me!" Maria demanded hotly.

"Not will... Do. I respect your choices. And you should not dishonour your lover's memory by assuming that he didn't understand the risks he took or that he was unwilling to accept the consequences of his actions."

Maria snapped for breath as though she had been doused in cold water: "So you are blameless because Robert knew the possible consequences?" she gasped, incredulous.

"No. Not at all. I am to blame. I did the deed. I held his gaze as he flitted away into oblivion. He died with honour. And that is all. All any of us can hope for in this conflict." Altaïr said quietly.

"It's a lie. An assassin lie." Maria felt her shoulders drop and rested the tip of her weapon on the ground as a portion of the anger left her, slowly and painfully: "You are so enraptured with your bloodshed that you have forgotten that it's also possible to _live_ with honour."

A small, wistful smile suddenly lurked in the corner of his mouth and he shook his head; not in denial, Maria felt.

"You are right." he said: "I had forgotten. Or perhaps never learned. I have always measured life in terms of its completion. Perhaps that is why I cannot give you the vengeance you seek. I must defend myself."

"I know." Maria said, feeling sorrow sneaking into her, closing its awful fingers around her mind and soul: "I miss him. I have nobody now. No one to catch me."

"You seem capable of standing on your own."

"Why couldn't you have tried to deny your guilt."

"Why would that have mattered?" Altaïr asked.

Maria sheathed her weapon again and studied the man standing close to her. Pale scars on tanned skin, amber eyes, high cheekbones.

"Maybe just because there is too much killing on both sides." she finally said: "But if we should meet again, I can't be certain that I won't attack. That I won't think your death is worth dying for." Maria lowered her head, an indefinable feeling of humiliation sneaking up on her. She gave Altaïr a quick look, taking in the unexpected calm of his demeanour, before she turned on her heel and walked away.

After a few steps, Altaïr called out: "Maria?" and she stopped in her tracks, not turning, her body ready for the attack she felt certain must come.

"Do _you_ live with honour?" Altaïr asked, and Maria found that she couldn't answer him.


End file.
